


We'll Come Again

by GallicGalaxy



Category: Dangan Ronpa, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Songfic, Suicide, mentioned Komaeda Nagito/unknown, possible Enoshima Junko/Kamukura Izuru, possible Komaeda Nagito/Kamukura Izuru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 02:25:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9636692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallicGalaxy/pseuds/GallicGalaxy
Summary: Down, down to hellIt's raining, it's rainingOn my wings...( Songfic for We'll Come Again - Corson )





	

**Author's Note:**

> I stayed up way too late to finish a fic for like the 400th time. I had an oc fic I was working on but instead I wanted to finish this (?) which I thought I'd given up on.
> 
> As is usual with my songfics, this ended up being way different from what I initially thought I was going to do. I...don't know what this is...a lot of it feels like repetitive whining to me instead of it building to a point like I wanted, but idk?? here have this, it's about Mukuro and Komaeda committing suicide...(note to self: write happier fanfictions...)

_Down, down to hell_

_It's raining, it's raining_

_On my wings_

 

He could feel it pulling on him, like weights tied to his arms. Dragging him down into a vast unknown ocean, a cloudy world where all sounds were echoes and all sights were distant shapes shifting indistinctly, forever out of his reach.

This, Komaeda thought, must have been what despair felt like.

Despair.

Was this despair? This feeling of being weighed down until you fell into an unknown, yawning void?

He'd never thought he'd feel this kind of despair. There'd been so little purpose in him, so little redeemable joy, that taking it away hadn't meant anything. But oh, when he realized what he truly wanted, when a feeble breath of life was at last breathed into his lungs, how much it hurt to feel it torn away. When gentle hands had first caressed the fragments of his sense of self, it had hurt like probing a wound. But then, when his nerves had warmed, it had given him something else.

He'd felt respected. Loved, even, for a brief time. And he'd come to realize, at least in part, that this was a good thing. Something he wanted. Something he needed.

And now it was gone. Gone, gone, gone. The man who had brought it had left harshly and precisely, as if he'd been surgically removed, but the feelings he'd left behind had floated delicately out of Komaeda's body like feathers.

Regardless of how they'd left, they were gone. And when he'd known nothing but the deadness that comes from being accustomed to pain, there was essentially no reason for him to long for the positive sensations that came from respect and affection. But once he'd felt it, the void it left behind made him feel like the world was collapsing around him.

That was his paradox, his black box warning.

That was what had made him feel despair.

 

_Down to your hopes_

_It's reaching, it's reaching_

_Like a storm_

 

Without Junko in the house, everything seemed so quiet. So empty.

The whiteness of the rare late winter snow outside seemed to emphasize the emptiness of their house. Junko had left all the curtains open. It almost seemed threatening now, due to how vast and cold the snow outside was. It seemed to be closing in on Mukuro, shrinking the dimensions of her house further and further until it was pressing up against her ribs, trying to keep her lungs from pulling in air.

It was cold. Cold outside, cold inside. But Mukuro didn't bother turning on the heat.

Once, there had been a tinge of joy inside this house. A laugh or a smile every now and then. Something besides sharp heels kicking against her skin again and again and again, leaving black bruises on her thighs, her shins, her chest, her shoulders, her back. Something besides venomous words being slung endlessly at her, or clawed hands being shoved up her skirt.

She could still feel pain.

As much as she'd tried to harden herself to it, tried to resist it all her life, she could still feel pain.

She could feel the newest scratches stinging as they struggled to heal. They were up under her skirt, on her inner thighs. She could feel residual bruises just about everywhere, and some dull pain in her ribs that had been there for longer than usual. Maybe Junko's kick had fractured one of them.

It didn't really matter in the long run. It was just one more wound to add to an ever-growing list of wounds. A list of wounds that would never _stop_ growing.

That was her life, day-in and day-out.

That was what made her feel despair.

 

_Tell me your reasons,_

_Your silence is too loud._

_Show me the seasons,_

_If we stay 'til the end_

 

How could he be gone?

Could he really and truly be gone just like he'd said he would be?

He'd never given Komaeda a reason. He'd just left and said that he wouldn't be coming back. Now Komaeda's snowy, trembling fingers were just grasping aimlessly at nothing, at the sheets of the bed he'd confined himself to. Like a sick patient in a hospital bed, kept company only by his own sweat and ragged breathing. He couldn't even imagine a nurse at his bedside, her ghostly smile sending shivers down his spine with its insincerity.

This world was so bland and empty without that faint taste of hope. His hope had been crushed by the soft snow that covered the land outside his windows. That hope, that force he'd wished upon everyone else, was now what was killing him. Killing him like a sickness, a sickness that filled his bones with lead, shredded weight off of his already-thin body like a child pulling up handfuls of grass, and drew circles of twilight around his eyes.

Komaeda drew in a deep breath, and with it he felt a strange lightness enter his body. All of a sudden, he could walk again, and at more than the weak shuffle that had carried him around before. Yet it was not a positive lightness, not a lightness that felt like hope or cheer. It was still empty and hollow.

He rose, still trembling slightly, and looked around. It was so light in there, for though the sky was still concealed by a sheet of velvety cloud, snow clouds were quite pale, and snow was quite reflective. Komaeda pushed back a set of curtains and gazed out at the clear, white-coated world on the other side of his barriers.

For a moment, a wish appeared in him, a small hint of a desire. He wondered if maybe, by some sliver of a chance, his beloved was not gone forever. Perhaps his figure, dark and distinct, would be seen sliding up that narrow, icy walkway.

But that was a fool's wish. A hopeless hope. It made his cowardly heart flutter, as pointless and saddening as it was.

 

_And we'll come again,_

_If you hold my hand..._

_Tomorrow,_

_No sorrow..._

 

Mukuro was leaning over her bathroom sink, staring at herself in the mirror. Staring into those narrow, grey eyes, wolflike in their emotionless loyalty to instinct. She ran her fingers through her short, black hair, wondering if anything in her life would've been different if she'd looked different. Her sister, after all, had that luscious blonde hair, those wide blue eyes, that alluring figure, that flawless skin.

Maybe Mukuro could've had those things. If she'd cut herself up and pasted new things to her body, taken herself apart and put herself back together like a doll until she didn't look like Mukuro anymore.

But it felt too late for that. For better or for worse, she would never be like Junko. Silhouetted against fame, with destruction at her heels – that was not her tomorrow. There was no future for her that ended up like that. The nearest she had to a future was stepping out of the bathroom, away from that haunted mirror, her boots drumming against the hard floor beneath her.

She was no soldier. Once, perhaps, she had been. But a soldier must have purpose, or they will lose their spirit. Even if that purpose has been carved cruelly into their brain until they think of nothing else at any time, they must have purpose. Some force behind the gun in their hands and the knife clutched between their teeth. Without purpose, the soldier falters, the army crumbles, the king is overthrown.

She was closer to a dog than a soldier. One of those dogs the brave activists are always too late to rescue. A dog that always runs to the fence to snap at whoever waits on the other side. A wolf told to impersonate a dog, kept chained to a post in someone's backyard.

Mukuro had lost her purpose, and therefore lost her utility. At least until Junko truly managed to beat all the will out of her sister. Then Mukuro would be truly mindless, left with no way or will to protest.

No. That could never happen. She couldn't let that happen.

 

_Down on my knees,_

_I'm waiting, I'm waiting_

_For your hand._

 

Komaeda was still staring out his window, mesmerized by something that wasn't there. He kept re-playing the scene in his mind, painting a single figure cutting through the stillness of the post-snow world. It seemed so real to his diseased mind. Real enough that he wanted to run right out the front door and into the great nuclear winter that lay on the other side of that threshold. How long had it been?

How long had it been since he'd stepped like a deer through that doorway? Since he'd breathed in a taste of the outside world? It felt like forever. It felt like there had never been anything but those crumpled sheets, cloudy dreams, the steady rasp of his own fevered breath.

Ever since he'd left, there had been nothing else.

Would there ever be anything else again? That was the question, after all.

He could stand there all he wanted, staring out at the snow, hoping and dreaming that his beloved's face would appear in that picture-perfect scene. But it wouldn't bring him back. And it wouldn't breathe life or hope back into his world.

If only his beloved could've seen him like this – frail and disheveled, his hair an ungroomed mess, his skin pulled up to his ribs, dark rings around his eyes even though he hardly ever left his bed. Then maybe he'd change his mind, abandon whatever he'd decided had come between them and come back to Komaeda. Pull him close and run his hands over Komaeda's frail shoulders, tell him everything was going to be alright.

But that wasn't going to happen.

So, the question was, what _was_ going to happen?

What was his future, besides staring out this window at the white, white world?

 

_Down to your hopes_

_It's reaching, it's reaching_

_Like a storm_

 

Mukuro wished she could cry. She felt like crying, with her sorrows so close to the surface, but her eyes felt dry and cold. The pain in her side was worsening, so she sat herself down on the sofa and very slowly unbuttoned her shirt. With it hanging half-open, she slid her opposite hand underneath it and palpated her ribs. She winced sharply as she pressed on that spot, and that sharp breath hurt her even more.

She went back to thinking about that hardened snow outside, pressing against her chest and squeezing the breath out of her lungs. It felt like she was being buried beneath that snow, as if she had fallen asleep on the ground and woken up two days later trapped by packed snow. Breathing the same air over and over again, strangled slowly by the sheer weight bearing down on her.

Mukuro coughed a little, and every heave of breath made her chest hurt more. She gave up on trying to feel her injury and just buttoned her shirt back up. It wouldn't matter anyway.

Sure, it hurt, but everything hurt. It would never hurt as much as the slow, cold burn of despair gnawing away at her self-worth. Bit by bit, her will to protest, to fight against the pain Junko forced on her day after day, was being destroyed. And when it was gone, Junko would've won.

There would've been nothing left of Mukuro.

Even now, was there anything left of her? She was sitting listlessly on her sofa, taking slow, labored breaths, thinking about what there could possibly be for her in the future.

She had no purpose. There was nothing left for her. Just despair, white and cold as the snow, blanketing everything she could see. Her entire body ached, and her very soul trembled with every breath. She felt so tired.

Mukuro closed her narrow eyes and remembered. Perhaps Junko had never been kind, or anything besides tantalizingly cruel and hateful. Perhaps only Mukuro had ever been different. But regardless of which was true, things hadn't always been this way. There had been light and laughter, passion and determination, sometimes shared between them and sometimes weaponized against the other twin.

Twin. The very concept seemed to come with some inherent bond, some irreversible tie between the affected two. Even if they weren't identical, they were twins. And once, they had been sisters.

But not anymore.

 

_Hold me, and whisper_

_And whisper_

_All your fears_

 

Komaeda was sitting on his floor, with his back to the wall. He felt so weak, so cripplingly weak, as though all of his bones had been broken and were still struggling to heal. He'd never taken care of himself as well as he should've, but seldom as poorly as he had been since he was severed from his love. There seemed to be more at stake now, and his body was protesting, longing to preserve itself in the name of love.

But that love had been shattered. Shattered, shattered, shattered. He'd spent days lying nearly motionless, doing nothing but telling himself that all he loved was gone.

And without it, he would fall back into being exactly the same as he'd been before.

That thought scared him. It terrified him. The thought of returning to his previous existence of feeling no pain and no pleasure because he had lost the ability to distinguish one from the other, to give any name to his own feelings. He never wanted to be like that again.

Perhaps it was true that no-one would know joy if it weren't for sorrow. But it was certainly true that Komaeda wouldn't have known sorrow it it hadn't been for joy. In a way, it was his love's fault that he was suffering now. Yet, still, Komaeda wouldn't have traded that time he spent in his beloved's grace for anything. It had shown him the only thing he'd ever truly wanted.

The thought of returning to that emotionless state made him more afraid than he'd ever been of anything else. Even pain, as crippling as it was, was better than that.

Yet, without love, what else was left for him?

Nothing. Just more of that emptiness. With pain in his heart, Komaeda hauled himself to his feet. He was shaking from head to toe, from both the cold and the unkempt state of his body. He needed to do something about this. To change the path of his future. And he knew how.

It would be...a triumph of despair. But that thought stalled him only for a moment.

Love had made him selfish. Pain had made him selfish.

 

_And we'll come again,_

_If you hold my hand..._

_Tomorrow,_

_No sorrow..._

 

The pain had to end.

Mukuro got to her feet. She felt like she should've been trembling, or falling to her knees, or crying her pale eyes out. But she was just standing silent and stoic in the center of her living room. The pain seemed to drain from her body through her hands, leaving only cold determination in its wake. She knew what she had to do, and she knew she could do it.

It had been hovering in her thoughts for years. Ever since this particular kind of cruelty had begun to shine through in her sister. The pain had magnified since then, with every day feeling more and more agonizing. Junko no longer had any empathy or pity for her sister. She saw her only as a tool, a toy, a thing to be abused and twisted and molded for her own devious purposes.

Maybe Junko had loved her once. Maybe, sometime in their childhood, there had been some sisterly love between them. It was almost a pity that it had all burned away. They still would've fought, but it never would've ended up like this. Being spat at and confined and degraded, and still crawling back to Junko's feet like a beaten dog.

Maybe it was because a part of Mukuro still wanted that love, that compassion, that notion of friendship. She didn't have anyone else.

Her life was empty. The only person left in it was Junko, whose cruel heels stabbed into Mukuro's flesh like knives, whose nails raked her open, who would do _anything_ to her and feel no remorse for it whatsoever.

Never again. The pain, the joy, the sadness...they all had to be washed away. Cut away.

Mukuro found her combat knife. It had served her well for years, and there was no item more fitting to serve her now. In the winter light, there was nothing more beautiful. The grip accepted Mukuro's hand like it belonged nowhere else. There were no two things in this world closer than Mukuro and her death blade.

As she held it above her head, examining its sharpness, she almost smiled.

 

_And we'll come again,_

_If you hold my hand..._

_Tomorrow,_

_No sorrow..._

 

Selfish.

That was what he was. There was no part of him that was still equipped to bring anyone else hope, or even to care. He began to wonder, as he should've a long time ago, if perhaps he had misinterpreted hope from the very beginning.

Now, he was a puppet with cut strings. He had been cast into the fire. Love and hope had been lost, and already he could feel his panicked heart starting to forget what they felt like. His legs were still shaking, still wanting with every step to collapse beneath him and lay him low. But with all his will, Komaeda was resisting. He was urging his muscles to move forward, to keep him in a standing position.

There would never be another hopeless, sleepless dawn. Another morning opening his eyes to see the sun rising, as if it had missed the fact that he hadn't actually slept. Sometimes, when he managed fitful sleep, he woke up shortly thereafter to feel his heart pounding like he was in the throes of death. At that point, it may very well have been, as little as he'd been eating, drinking, or sleeping lately.

Never again would that hummingbird heartbeat wake him up from a dead sleep. Never again would his tired eyes roll hopelessly towards his lighted windows. Never again would his lungs release a weak, tormented squeal at the sight of the sun.

Never again would he feel that blank deadness, that emotionless sensation that came from being so accustomed to pain that you didn't know what pain was anymore. That was the closest thing he had to hope now – the thought of release from slowly wasting away in his bed, twisting the sweat-scented sheets in his fingers, starving and sleepless and dehydrated and looking forward to nothing. Just lying there thinking about what would have happened if love hadn't left his miserable life.

He wondered what would be strong enough. He needed a method that was certain, that was reliable. That would not fail him.

He yanked the extension cord off the fan in his living room. He could make this work.

 

_Tell me your reasons,_

_Your reasons..._

 

Mukuro wondered if she should say anything.  
She could leave a note. A little slip of paper with her last horrid secrets scrawled out onto it. Junko wouldn't care, of course. Mukuro could already see her crumpling it up and tossing it away, scoffing silently at how pathetic her sister was. But Mukuro, she didn't care. What Junko thought of her would soon cease to matter.

So, those last words would only matter to Mukuro herself.

Would it really make her feel better to throw a last word of spite at Junko? Not likely. Would it make her feel better to leave a few words in her wake? A pitiful poem that no-one would remember her by?

She thought about it. She sat down and crossed her legs and wondered what she would even say. Every heartbeat she spent thinking about what she could leave behind was a heartbeat that Junko got closer to coming home. She wanted Junko to know how she felt, to know what she had gone through – the pain the hopelessness, the faint desire for love throbbing beneath the surface every time those cruel heels or bitter insults struck her.

But no words would make her feel that. No words would make her understand. Nothing Mukuro could write would make her feel _anything_.

Yet Mukuro ended up writing something. _She tore a page off a notepad and wrote: “Nobody will remember me”_. There was no period, no ellipsis, no conclusion. It was just scrawled across the page at an awkward angle, meant for nobody, tied to no emotions. It didn't even look like a suicide note. It was just the four-word story of a girl who knew she was doomed to be forgotten.

 

_Hold me, and whisper_

_And whisper..._

 

Komaeda had always thought he would leave nothing behind. That his passage would carry with it no great marks of sorrow and no small, twisted words. That there would be no-one on this side worth addressing directly. All he'd wanted to give others with his death was hope.

But now there was something different.

There was someone on this side of life that his heart had beat for. They had stopped caring, certainly, and he'd lost their company permanently, but he could still feel the ghost of their presence. That parasitic ghost, feeding on the energy of his soul, was what had driven him here.

The only person he thought of was the one he'd loved. The one he still loved, despite the fact that they had tossed him aside and ripped all _their_ love away from him.

It was unlikely that Komaeda's beloved would ever see any note he left behind. And still, with shaking hands, he was desperate to write something, to say anything he could.

He could have been eloquent. He could've written out a long, impassioned story, something that would've brought tears to the eyes of any who read it. But instead, it was three words. All he wrote was _“I love you”_ , in his crude handwriting.

The one he'd loved would never see it. Nobody else who saw it would ever understand. But maybe, in his heart of hearts, his beloved would feel it. Those three words would somehow reach him, and he would somehow be able to know everything behind them, everything else that they meant.

Even though they were just three words hastily written with shaking hands across a piece of scrap paper, and left on the floor of a back closet.

 

_Down, down to hell_

_It's raining, it's raining_

_On my wings_

 

There was that mirror again.

Mukuro looked at herself for a moment. She felt nothing. She didn't even register the being in the mirror as herself.

She leaned her compact chest over the bathroom sink. This was it.

She switched her combat knife over to her left hand. And then, holding it perfectly over the pristine basin, the void of death that lived just in front of that cruel mirror, she opened a storm of red rain. Thick and heavy it rolled, from a gash as deep as the ocean. Mukuro's suddenly tender heart raced, her body trying to flee from itself and finding only impassible barriers in every direction. The cut had been drawn across three quarters of her right forearm, and now it was weeping violently and profusely.

Then that right hand, glued to her dying arm, stole the knife from her left hand. Almost mechanically, she mirrored that same deep slit on her left arm.

The storm had doubled. There was nothing, nothing left but blood. She could hear the thunder and see the lightning, and as she closed her eyes, the storm surrounded her. Gone was the icy snow asphyxiating her slowly, and now she was in the eye of a storm. The rain was coming fast and hard and soaking her body, but not a single drop felt cold on her skin. She felt more peaceful in the center of that storm than she had in a very long time.

Her hands twitched and fell open, and into the endless basin flowed the slick rain of Mukuro's blood. It was pouring out from her with all the pain and terror and grief, disappearing into the endlessness of the outside world. Everything she had done, every lie she had told and every word she had held beneath her fearful tongue was vanishing.

Everything she was, it all came down to this. This blood. This storm of death. These last drowning breaths in the coldness of her bathroom.

 

_Down on my knees,_

_I'm waiting, I'm waiting_

_For your hand..._

 

He'd folded his note over itself, but when he looked down at the blank side, it seemed unfitting. It was, perhaps, not poetic enough.

So he'd flipped it back over.

Now, the last thing he saw would be those three words. That final, timid _“I love you”_. That was what this tragedy was about, after all. Love, and the way it lifted up hearts that had never known the meaning of love before. And the way that its absence left even more pain behind than there had ever been before.

He'd never been worth anything anyway. He'd always wanted to die for someone else. And yet here he was, dying for himself. Creating a paradox out of his own intentions. Love had made him shallow, love had made him selfish. It had brought him to life and then killed him.

Love was, if nothing else, hypocritical. A great paradoxical mystery that he had figured out too late.

If he'd never risen from his bed that day, his fate would've been much the same. It would've been less violent, and he wouldn't have died alone in a closet, held off the ground by a knotted extension cord. Instead, his body would've given out, and he would've died alone curled into a defensive ball in that same bed, having stopped caring completely about his state of being.

He'd never been anything. He didn't need to have any more of a legacy than that one little piece of paper on the floor, those three little cruel words ringing in his eyes as he kicked a box out from under himself.

 

And somewhere, out in the cold, quiet world, more snow began to fall, like the icy remains of shattered spirits. A wind broke the stillness, telling the bitter flakes of snow where to fall. It carried them past two figures who walked together through these lonely, listening streets. One turned his eyes in a familiar direction, and felt a rare twinge of concern. He thought about breaking away, about making his way up to that door and at least letting that poor boy hear his voice again.

But the whiteness of this snowy world blinded even post-humans. And the being beside him, her body wrapped in the furs of lesser beasts, she drew his attention. Her blue eyes could blind him as easily as the snow, and she was complaining now about how much she wanted to get home. He had never asked her if she went home to anyone, as it had never seemed that important.  
And neither knew, as he locked his arm in hers and walked her further, the streetlights beginning to turn on in their wake. In low light, they would call each other killers. Alone in their beds, they would call themselves killers.

But no other tongues were left to call them so.

 


End file.
